Speaker Nabih Berri rejected any negotiation with the jihadists who took more than 35 soldiers and policemen captive in the northeastern town of Arsal last week.

In remarks to As Safir newspaper published on Monday, Berri said: “Had Prime Minister Tammam Salam asked for my advice, I would have told him to resort to Qatar and Turkey to resolve this issue.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and top diplomats from Europe and the Middle East gathered in Paris Saturday called for an extension to a temporary truce currently in force between Israel and Hamas.

Both sides have agreed to a 12-hour "humanitarian" ceasefire in Gaza that started at 0500 GMT Saturday, putting a brief stop to a conflict that has killed more than 1,000 Palestinians -- a large majority of them civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry huddled Friday with U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon and Egypt's foreign minister as pressure built for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Kerry, who spent another night in Cairo reaching out by telephone to regional officials, met Ban and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri for around half an hour.

Turkey's foreign minister flew into Qatar Friday amid mounting U.S. calls on the two Western allies to use their influence with Palestinian movement Hamas to end the bloodshed around Gaza.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been spearheading Western efforts to end the Palestinian territory's deadliest violence since 2008-9, has repeatedly telephoned both Qatari and Turkish leaders in an effort to broker a truce.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke Thursday to his counterparts in Qatar and Turkey, which support the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as he pressed for a Gaza ceasefire.

Kerry -- who is in Egypt, which has drafted a truce proposal for the Israel-Hamas conflict -- spoke by phone with the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey, a U.S. official said.

The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, arrived unexpectedly in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on regional issues with King Abdullah, Al-Arabiya television said.

The Saudi-owned news channel said the Qatari leader was in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, "to discuss developments in the region".

The Qatar-backed head of the Syrian opposition's interim government was sacked Tuesday, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, once again exposing the sharp divisions between the opposition's main backers.

Since the National Coalition was created in late 2012, rivalries between Riyadh and Doha have consistently undermined the group, which acts as the main opposition body.

Abu Dhabi has accused the Al-Jazeera TV channel and websites close to Qatar of "fabricating" information suggesting UAE supported Israel's operation in Gaza, in the latest tensions between both countries.

Relations between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain sank to a new low in March when the three governments withdrew their ambassadors from Doha, accusing it of meddling in their affairs and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Qatar plans to buy U.S. Patriot missile batteries and Apache attack helicopters in a major arms deal worth about $11 billion, senior Pentagon officials said Monday.

The sale would provide Qatar with roughly ten batteries for Patriot systems designed to knock out incoming missiles, as well as 24 Apache helicopters and 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France Presse.

Authorities in the United Arab Emirates have arrested Qatari "spies," an Emirati daily reported on Wednesday in a new sign of mounting tensions between Doha and its Gulf neighbors.

The report in Al-Khaleej newspaper, which cited Emirati sources, was in response to a report in Qatar's Al-Arab daily that three Qataris had been subjected to "arrest and torture" in UAE capital Abu Dhabi.